A Son of the Rock

Canongate, 2001, 285 p. Borrowed from a threatened library. One of the 100 best Scottish Books.

If any proof were needed that the Scottish novel has escaped the confines and restrictions of Calvinism this book would provide it. Not that talk of religion is entirely absent but it is – more or less – restricted to its “proper” (as one of the narrators has it) sphere: football. The book is told from the four viewpoints of the Scott family, nearly sixteen year-old Joni, her fourteen year-old brother Jake, father Vic and mother Angie. Their hedonistic carryings-on range from Joni’s shoplifting and stealing of the bill money from beneath her mother’s mattress, Jake’s incessant playing of console and PC games and Angie’s alcoholism. Only Vic is free of what might be termed vice – but he is on Prozac.

There’s no sign here of the Scottish writer’s love of landscape description (most of the action takes place in Edinburgh) and not much of two of the three great novelistic concerns but the same cannot be said of the third. The novel is riddled (or should that be raddled?) with sex; from Joni’s determined efforts to lose her virginity before she’s legal, Jake’s adolescent thumbings-through of increasingly sticky-paged magazines, Vic’s Prozac-numbed lack of interest, Angie’s drunken couplings with Raymond, her boss at the bookie’s, and Last Bus Lil’s desperate cravings for bus drivers. In passing there is also, “Sean says the priest in there’s an old paedophile and shags all the bairns from Sunday School.” Born Free was published in 1999; well before the recent scandals broke. Wayward priests were it seems something of an open secret.

The narrative promises to be about the family dynamic – especially its breakdown – and in this respect Raymond’s disappearance in suspicious circumstances threatens to take the book in a different direction but it is the fulcrum that provides the precipitating crisis.

Joni’s thought that, “Virginity’s far too good to lose just once,” is a striking phrase. So too is Vic’s when he thinks about the “coronary problems on both sides of the family” and reflects, “Our hearts get us every time.” This is a novelistic formulation but in a novel where the main characters treat each other with the contempt born of too much familiarity stands out as overworked.

Earthy, unsentimental and above all true to its characters, who live and breathe (not to mention function bodily) in front of our eyes, Born Free is a brilliant observation on Scottish city life in the late twentieth century.

Pedant’s corner:- a crowd gather round (gathers,) Head Office really frown upon such losses (frowns,) chippolata (chipolata,) “How could Dad have ever have … (“have ever”, or “ever have”; not “have ever have”,) “I’m determined not to let her phase me” (faze me,) “for a another drink” (no “a”,) he wants me to got through (go through,) “he promises to will phone round” (no “will”; or “he promises he will”,) “I try not the think” (not to think.)